Too Good To Be True
by seriousish
Summary: First dates are always awkward. Joker X OFC


_You're just too good to be true  
Can't take my eyes off of you  
You'd be like heaven to touch  
I wanna hold you so much_

"Like my mood music?" The Joker doesn't wait for her to answer, because it isn't a question, of course. Besides, it's hard to talk with fishhooks stretching her cheeks.

"I know it's not the rock and roll you kids seem to like, but I'm an old-fashioned guy. I like to take a girl out, steal her a steak dinner… and I never use a gun! Because right now, I am all about _you_. Tell me, what do you like?"

She doesn't answer. If she opened her mouth, the razor blade might slip inside.

"I like this song too. I know, the hair is grunge, but the soul…" he put a hand over his chest "is all romance. But before we go all the way, how 'bout a makeover?"

The knife in his hand looks very sharp. Her breath quickens.

He teasingly waves the blade around her, never deigning to touch the skin. She pleads as best she can from deep in her throat.

"I like the eyes. Could be a little more frightened, but I like them." Joker adjusts his tie in her wide-eyed reflection. "Now the nose…" he let the tip of his knife bite the inside of her left nostril. "Ever wanted a nose-ring?"

She tries to speak through her teeth, but the result only makes him titter. "Speak! Speak! Good dog! Now play dead! No, I like the nose the way it is. We'll have to wait till the first time it's broken to consider modifications. But the smile… didn't your mother ever tell you that a pretty girl's most important cosmetic is her smile?"

He plucked the fishing line holding her smile in place.

"And this smile doesn't quite match your eyes."

He cuts just under her eyelids, two straight lines that pointed to the corners of her smile like clown make-up. Blood runs like tears, seeping into her splayed mouth to stain her teeth.

"Why, doctor, have you been getting into the strawberries?" He wipes at her teeth with the finger of his glove. "Funny thing about mothers. Mine was a whore. Not figuratively. She was a sweet woman, a kind woman, but men paid her to spread her legs. All day long, she'd get slapped around by pimps and johns and the cops, so she came home looking like a wreck."

Joker gently slides his knife between her gums and began sawing through her cheeks. "**Don't struggle!** It always hurts a little the first time. Now where was I? Oh yeah. My mom would come home, sore and bleeding, and all she'd want would be a little tenderness!"

Joker is apoplectic with outrage at the state of affairs, his mouth curling downward to contrast his smiling scar in a kind of Doppler effect.

"And all I'd want was to make her happy. **I told you not to worry about the bleeding, I gave you a coagulant, didn't I!?** I'm all about women's needs; I'm a nice guy. Feminist, really."

Joker pauses to dab a handkerchief soaked in alcohol along her wound. He hums while he does it.

"So now it's mother's day. I get ready for school all by myself. I fix her breakfast in bed and tell her that I'll always be her valentine because, dumb little snot that I am, I've confused the holidays! I was nine. We go about our days and she comes home with a dime-bag to chase all the spunk she's swallow."

His hands went faster as he cut into her other cheek, brisk motions like a painter slashing at the canvas.

"I go to bed because it's a school night, while she shoots up in the kitchen. Midnight rolls by. Mom comes into my room. She pulls back the covers. She calls me her special boy. Then she rides me like a pony."

The Joker pushes the needlepoint through either side of her wound. He begins to stitch up her cheeks, higher than they had once been.

"I go to school the next morning and tell the others kids what happened. They _laugh._ They laugh at me and call me a motherfucker. Suddenly I don't like the way my mother makes me feel. I tell her to stop, but I'm just too pretty, she says. And by now mom's too fucked up on drugs to get off on anything else. So one day when I'm home along, I take a butcher knife and I run it through my face. She doesn't touch me anymore. She doesn't even look at me! Not even when she slits her wrists. Wanna hear the punchline?"

He bites off the last of her stitches and cuts the fishing wire holding her flaps of skin up.

"She did it with the same butcher knife I had used. That's how I know she would think you're perfect for me! Just look at you!"

He spins her around to face the mirror. "Now you're part of the family."

For once, Harley doesn't have to smile. Mr. J's done it for her. "Oh, puddin'! I'm bee-yoo-ti-ful!"

_At long last love has arrived  
And I thank God I'm alive  
You're just too good to be true  
Can't take my eyes off of you_


End file.
